


Duck Fat Suffices

by Paradoxides



Category: Fitz and the Fool Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb, Tawny Man Trilogy - Robin Hobb
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 17:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18554509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paradoxides/pseuds/Paradoxides
Summary: Bee Farseer returns to her childhood home, and sorts through her father's private papers.Not a fix-it: a what-if.What if Fitz had to go further to heal the Fool after bringing him back to life?TW: implied self-harm, past rape, past torture. Spoilers galore. Beware.





	Duck Fat Suffices

_I found many texts among my father's personal effects when I eventually returned to Withywoods. Kettricken passed away in the Mountains, after a long and peaceful period teaching Integrity the ways of her folk and instilling in him the values of his position as Sacrifice. I remained with my cousin for a while, as we had become very close friends, to grieve with him and assist in the relaying of messages to and from his father at Buckkeep. As soon as a member of Nettle's coterie arrived to shoulder my duties I took fond leave of him, and traveled with Perseverance, Caution and a small continent of Mountain troops back to my childhood home. The stone wolf shadowed us, and we ate well from the kills it left each morning. Once, we came upon a party of dead bandits, all but one of their horses unharmed for us to take. The wolf became a still and silent snarling sentinel in the courtyard before the main doors._

_It was an odd return for me. I had expected changes, but still my heart ached with the absence of my mother and all the folks lost to the White mercenaries. I think a total change would have been easier to bear, for it would not have invoked as many poignant memories quite so easily. But our rooms were largely untouched save for cleaning, my father's bureau still locked with his papers and journals safely inside. I could have left it as it was, but I had promised my sister anything he had written relating to his experiences with the Skill. Pregnant and suffering miserable morning sickness with her second child, she could only trust me to sort through what I felt was relevent. Why she had not come herself before, I could only guess. The following excerpts were ripped out of his journal and stuffed into a flat file concealed in his hidden drawer. I have not yet decided whether to keep them hidden, or burn them._

 

I think the White Woman plagued us both during the weeks we spent in the empty quarry at the edge of the woods. For myself, the regret that I had not killed her haunted my dreams. I would be back in the derelict ice palace, cradling my friend's dead corpse to my chest like the most precious burden; always it started this way. Sometimes she stabbed me in the back with her blackened bone stubs as I walked away from her, and impaled both of us. Sometimes I made to slice her, and dropped his body to the ground where it shattered into a thousand frozen pieces.  
My waking up screaming or sobbing, I think, helped him not at all. I wanted to be strong of mind and body for his sake, but I now reflect that we had both been through some not-insignificant measure of trauma, and his treatment brought back some of my more visceral memories of Regal's dungeon. Even if my mind was hazy at that time, my body remembered and quailed with it.  
Thus it was that we shared a cloak before the fire each night, and I clung to him as much as he to me, when night terrors assaulted us both.

We settled into a comfortable rhythm. I hunted, fished and gathered wild sweet nettles and watercress to stew. Some of my smaller tools I refashioned into sharp wood carving tools he could use on thicker branches to retrain his damaged fingers back to the breathtaking artistry they had once been capable of. I loathed to leave him for too long when my traps were empty and I had to hunt in earnest, for several times I returned to find him curled around himself, convinced that I had tired of him and left for home. He certainly tested my patience in those days and I hope he never realised it, but of course the thought of leaving truly never crossed my mind. Every evening before sleep, he curled into my chest and I released some Skill with the last of my strength, to speed his healing overnight. 

It was a truly strange time. I have never spent so long with a person without conversation, nor felt so close to anyone besides Nighteyes. We spoke occasionally out of practicality, but for the most part we simply existed. The recent past made the future seem uncertain, an enormous looming wall to be climbed, so the present was the only comfortable time to dwell in. The Fool seemed utterly empty; of wishes and dreams, he had none past immediate bodily concerns. He was off the edge of his map in a way he had never been since birth. I supposed it was an additional trauma of a kind I had never known, as if he had been physically deposited in another land without a map or language or purpose. 

He lay on his front this morning as he often did, bared from the waist up. His flayed back was slow to heal, even with my Skill encouragement, and still an angry red mess that pulled at his every movement and wept clear fluid when opened, which was often. His shoulder blades and the delicate bones of his neck and spine jutted starkly through the pale whole skin still edging the mess, now blushing with a faint sunburn.  
"Fitz," he murmured weakly, alarming me, but only turned his head with a grimace of pain when I rushed to his side. I tried to take his silvered fingers to give him Skill, but he snatched away with a frustrated snarl.  
I laid my hand briefly on his hair, silken gold where it grew in new, the old growth dry and dull from his days of death. "I will return," I told him, as I had become used to doing. "I promise. Wait here for me."  
Without waiting for his acknowledgement, I hefted my hunting pack, dagger and slingshot and hiked to a stretch of river where I had glimpsed the nesting site of wild duck. I was lucky, for they were in season and returned to their site to mate and sit on their eggs. It took me a couple of hours to bring down two drakes and a female with my sling, and raid the nest for several eggs that I carefully bundled in the edge of my cloak. 

The fat ducks I skinned carefully, and drained the grease to keep aside. Some sweet nettle and willow bark I crushed into a paste, and mixed it with the grease. My knowledge of herbs to heal was sorely secondary to my knowledge of herbs to kill, but these I knew to be at least harmless, and possibly helpful. When I had scraped the last of it into a pouch and set the meat to stew over the smouldering logs, I sat back down with my friend and touched his shoulder.  
"Fool. Will you let me put a paste on your back?"  
He turned his head towards me, and seemed as though he might decline, but after a long moment he gave me a slow nod and whispered, "Thank you."  
I scooped some of the mixture back into my hands and decided to start with the sunburn to ease him into my touch and the feel of the grease on his skin. He was warm to the touch. I should have left him covered when I went hunting. He hissed when I touched the raw edges, and his fingers scrabbled at the dirt as mine glided as lightly over his expanse of wounded flesh as I could. As I smoothed it over him, I realised I was chanting, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Over and over, uselessly, as he tried to stop himself writhing away from me in his agony. "There now, it's done," I consoled as soon as I could, but he turned baleful, wet eyes on me and heaved to his feet, shaking me off. Stumbling, he snatched the half-empty pouch, retreated into the Elderling tent and disappeared behind the flap. 

I did not go to him until later in the day, when the light had turned the leaves from green to heavy gold. The stew was long done, the meat succulent and tender, if lacking in salt, and I intended to rouse him for a bowl.  
I had heard nothing from the tent to indicate whether he was awake or asleep. As I approached I called out to him, "It's Fitz. I have some food for you. I'm coming in." I heard no response.

He was lying facedown. Around his hips, the floor of the tent was soaked in blood. I dropped the bowl, my fingers suddenly nerveless and stiff with alarm, and rushed to kneel by his side. The grease on his back was stiffened to white and very little of it had rubbed away, but between his upper thighs were great, wide, oozing scratches as if he had been mauled by a bear.  
His hand reached out, tentatively, for mine. I took it and supported him as he pulled himself into his elbows.  
"It looks worse than it is," he told me, preempting my indrawn breath. "Would you-" and he passed me the pouch of grease. 

The damage to his inner thighs revealed scrapes as deep as his remaining fingernails could have torn in, and worse even higher up in the intimate creases of his body. His skin was much thinner and smoother than mine, mostly hairless and without much natural resistance to damage. He was silent as I administered the balm without comment or embarrassment, as if he were a wounded hound. He watched me as I moved over his body dispassionately, as a healer would. All the damage she had done to him there was freshly opened. 

I covered his injuries with bandages as best I could, while leaving him the freedom to move and function without impediment. He raised his head, and his expression pinioned me. I saw naked hunger in his hooded gaze, and I had an inkling of what might have happened. What he might have done to himself. He lowered his eyes to hide a flush of shame.  
My heart broke again for him. Our argument of so long ago still fell in a ghostly curtain between us. My prejudices; his love. The words I had spoken in anger and ignorance. He would never have felt any shame if I hadn't been so young and stupid, walling myself off to him even as he opened himself up to me. This was the deep, festering wound that would not heal, not as long as I held back from him that which he gave so freely to me. 

I did not need to ask why he had done it. I knew well that the pain of violation cuts through to the soul. He needed something that medicine could not heal, and I was determined that I would aid his recovery no matter what it was.

I told him he was safe. That whatever he needed he could take from me freely, without consequence or regret. That I would not leave his side until he was whole in body and spirit. Anything that happened between us in this ancient place would remain between only we two forever if he wished it. I begged him to believe me, to lean on me, to ask me for anything and I would grant it. 

I try to reflect honestly on what happened between us, without dwelling too long on the details that may distract from the greater design. He suddenly leaned forward and kissed me, that much I will record. Like the rest of him, his lips were cool on mine and he trembled at first, uncertain of his welcome. I placed a hand behind his head in reassurance, and as he gained confidence he became savage. I had never had a man before or after this, and the hard press of his attentions was strange and overwhelming. 

He took from me much that evening. Fey and wild-eyed he drained me in more ways than I thought possible and left me with bruising that matched some of his own. He bade me use his true name until I was hoarse from screaming it. I know he tasted my blood; my lips split under his teeth. I resisted nothing, but accepted all the violence, anguish and spite he poured into me as if I were memory stone being worked into his dragon. Afterwards, he had the look of a whipped dog until I pulled him back to me, and against my chest he wept openly for the first time while I held him tightly to my heart. 

In the morning his back was healed and silvery with scar tissue.

Women rarely discuss the subject of rape with men, and men discuss it even less. So all I had gleaned had been snatches of whispered conversations from within the walls of the castle. I came to realise that he had been broken in a way I had not. His very sense of self was frayed thin, and so he had repaired it with threads torn from mine. But what he took, I gave willingly. 

We have not spoken of it, and he has not asked me for anything more. I think this was his darkest, lowest time and he fears to be reminded. He seems mostly recovered since; he laughs, he flirts, he entertains. Sometimes he looks at me with a shadow in his eye and pulls away. I regret nothing.

What haunts me is the memory of merging with him to become one, as he passed from the rooster crown through my body to his. The fierce agony of becoming complete only to be torn asunder is perhaps described best as pain in a phantom limb, if a mere limb could be as important as he is to me. In my own dark times I ache to be complete once more. I hate him for leaving me-

_  
The paper below this is illegible. The words are deeply scored out with a ferocity that must have destroyed the pen he used. I think I will keep this in a secret place lest I come to forget how the stone wolf was once my very human fathers. The tears I shed on him last night bought him several seconds of movement; he licked them away and curled up around me. The housekeeping staff are going to have questions about that; already I can hear raised voices and the pounding of boots on the stair. Thank Eda for the tunnels._


End file.
